Follow all our Best of 2025 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.
Hip-hop oldies become jazz instrumentals. Cult folk songs become grand spaghetti-western soundscapes. Blink-182 hits become DIY bedroom jams. We’ve got ’90s hardcore bangers shredded on acoustic guitar, Spanglish Latin-pop takes on Air Supply and Elvis, and, maybe most outrageously of all, a wild experiment in turning everyone from Chappell Roan to Smash Mouth into emo/screamo.
It’s an especially unruly set this year, but a rewarding one. Enough preamble. Dive in.
Jackson C. Frank is one of those names that just insists on being investigated. He’s a near mystical/mythical figure from the 1960’s, with a back story that shreds any other to ribbons, so wracked it is with tragedies both accidental and self-inflicted. Golden Mirrors: The Undiscovered, Series 1, from erstwhile Bad Seed Mick Harvey, sees him again team up with Amanda Acevedo, a singer, artist and film maker from Mexico to pay tribute to Frank. The pair put together a melancholic album of orchestrated noir in 2023, Phantasmagorian Blue. This is the first in (what the title suggests is) a series of uncovering artists who influenced them, while residing possibly under the radar of many of their audience.